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<a name="spade.basic.spadeplatform"></a>The SPADE Agent Platform</h2></div></div></div>
<p>Simply put, SPADE is an agent platform based on the XMPP/Jabber technology. This technology offers by itself many features and facilities that ease the construction of MAS, such as an existing communication channel, the concepts of users (agents) and servers (platforms) and an extensible communication protocol based on XML, just like FIPA-ACL. Many other agent platforms exist, but SPADE is the first to base its roots on the XMPP technology.</p>
<p>The SPADE Agent Platform does not require (but strongly recommends) the operation of agents made with the SPADE Agent Library (see next section). The platform itself uses the library to empower its internals, but aside from that, you can develop your own agents in the programming language of your choice and use them with SPADE. The only requirement those agents must fulfill is to be able to communicate through the XMPP protocol. The FIPA-ACL messages will be embedded in XMPP messages. Be warned, however, that some features of the whole SPADE experience may not be available if you do not use the SPADE Agent Library to build your agents.</p>
<p>SPADE is written in the Python programming language. In order to fully understand and use SPADE, a bit of knowledge about Python is required, but, hey! you would not be reading this manual if you weren't a top-notch programmer, wouldn't you?</p>
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